1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to superscalar processors, and more particularly, to a method for reducing the number of register file ports in a very wide instruction issue processor.
2. Description of the Related Art
To gain performance, current machine architectures have become aggressive in issuing and executing multiple instructions per clock. As explained in further detail below, this almost linearly increases the number of read and write ports to the architectural register file of the chip. Moreover, speculative execution is a common technique employed in implementing such machines, which in turn requires the provision of an additional reorder buffer register file. Thus, when instructions are issued in such machines to execution units, the number of ports are very high on both the architectural register file and the reorder buffer register file. This makes the register files heavily metal limited, resulting in the dual drawbacks of increasing the metal area and worsening the timing characteristics. Rapidly accessing the operand data is critical in most of these machines, and thus the register file timing becomes a performance bottleneck.
Referring to FIG. 1, the basic relationship between the number of register ports and the issue number of a machine will be described. FIG. 1 generally depicts the operation of a superscalar machine. Reference characters IF denote fetching an instruction (such as "add" r1 and r2 to obtain r3), and characters ID denote the fetching of data needed to carry out the instruction (such as r1 and r2). The instructions and data are loaded in a register file, whereby the data is applied to the appropriate one of parallel execution units (such as ALUs). In the case of two execution units running in parallel, the processor is said to have a superscalar degree of 2, or in other words, is a 2-issue machine. Four data (two for each issue) are simultaneously supplied from the register file to the execution units, and thus four read register ports would be needed. Similarly, in the case of a 4-issue machine, the register would be equipped with eight ports, whereas an 8-issue machine would require sixteen register read ports. Also, in some cases the execution units, such as store execution units, will require the provision of three ports.
In addition, due to dependencies among instructions and a lack of parallelism in the program code, reorder buffers as mentioned above are additionally provided, further increasing the port requirements. Assume, for example, the case of an 4-issue machine in which the four instructions shown in FIG. 2 have been fetched for execution. As can be seen, the third instruction "2" is dependent on the execution results of the first instruction "0". That is, the value of r1 needed for r4.rarw.r18, r1 will not be know until after execution of r1.rarw.r2, r3. Thus, if these four instructions were simultaneous applied to the machine's execution pipeline, erroneous calculations may result. Instruction dependencies such as this were one factor leading to the so-called "out of order" execution discussed below.
Reference is now made to FIG. 3 for a general explanation of an "out-of-order" machine. The out-of-order machine is capable of scanning the fetched instructions to identify those that are dependent and those that are independent. Consider the example of an 8-issue machine, and assume, as shown in FIG. 3, three sets of eight instructions each, for a total of 24 instructions under consideration. As also shown, assume the second and sixth instructions of the first set are dependent, and that there are no dependent instructions in either the second or third sets. These instructions are loaded into an issue window or instruction window of the machine. A scheduling algorithm identifies the independent instructions within the instruction window whose operands have been completed (and for which an execution module is available), and loads the first eight of the independent instructions in the instruction pipeline. These would be instructions 1, 3-5 and 7-10 in FIG. 3. Then, assuming that the operands for instructions 2 and 6 have been resolved, these instructions together with instructions 11-16 may be applied to the pipeline in a next execution cycle.
Conventionally, out-of-order execution for an 8-issue machine is implemented as shown in FIG. 4. Eight instructions are received in order. Each instruction is made up of an instruction identifier lid, a logical destination address Lid and at least two operand identifiers ser. The logical destination addresses Lid identify which register of an architectural register file ARF 408 that a corresponding instruction result is to be deposited, and are stored in order in a dependency chain table DCT 402 at corresponding instruction identifier addresses lid of the DCT 402.
As already mentioned, the instructions arrive eight at a time in an order dictated by the program code. These instructions are stored, in order, in eight of the one-hundred twenty-eight registers of the central instruction window CIW 404. By searching the destination addresses Did contained in the DCT 402, a scheduling algorithm identifies the dependent instructions within the CIW 404 whose operands have been not completed. Only the first eight independent entries are applied to a bypass matrix 410. The bypass matrix 410 receives the operand data from from multiple sources including, but not limited to, the ARF 408 and/or a reorder buffer ROB 406, and routes the data to the respectively appropriate execution units 412. The execution units 412, for example, are arithmetic logic units and the like.
The reorder buffer ROB 406 temporarily stores the results of the execution units 412, and for this reason, the ROB 406 is equipped with eight write ports. Each result is stored in the ROB 406 at an address which corresponds to the physical register identifier Rid, which is the transformed logical destination address Lid once it passes through the DCT 402. These results remain in the ROB 408 until they are "retired" to the architectural register file 408, at which time the data is stored at the appropriate logical destination address Lid within the ARF 408. In this example, the ARF 408 has 160 registers.
In the example, up to eight data at a time can be retired into the ARF 408 from the ARF 408, and thus the ARF 408 is equipped with eight read ports and the ARF is equipped with eight write ports. However, all eight data must satisfy the retirement criteria, and thus, in some cases less than eight data may be retired in a given cycle. In order for a data to be retired, all previous data must be present. In other words, there can be no retirement of the results of a given instruction into the ARF 408 until all prior instructions have been executed and stored.
In addition, the occurrence of a so-called "trap" results in the "flushing" of all subsequent data already stored in the ROB 406. Traps are internal errors or exceptions, such as divide-by-zero and arithmetic overflows. Keeping in mind that the instructions are executed out-of-order (relative to the program code), it is possible for a trap to occur after later-ordered instructions have been executed and the corresponding results stored in the ROB 406. A trap results in the deletion of all subsequent data of the ROB 406. In this way, the integrity of the data contained in the ARF 408 is assured.
The configuration of FIG. 4 also demands the provision of read ports from both of the ROB 406 and the ARF 408. This is because the possibility exists that some or even all of the data needed to execute the eight instructions is contained in one of the ROB 406 or the ARF 408. In the example here, eighteen read ports extend from the ROB 406 to the bypass matrix 406 and an additional eighteen read ports extend from the ARF 408 to the bypass matrix 406. The number of ports (eighteen in this example) is dictated by the execution units. In the example here, two of the execution units are "store" units which require three operands to execute. The remaining six execution units are supplied with two operands each. The total operands applied to the pipeline, and thus total read ports from ROB 406 and ARF 408 is (2.times.6)+(3.times.2)=18.
In the example of the 8-issue machine of FIG. 4, the number of ports equipped in the ROB 406 and the ARF 412 is as shown below:
TABLE 1 PORT TYPE ROB 410 ARF 412 TOTAL READ (Execution) 18 18 36 WRITE (Execution) 8 8 READ (Retire) 8 8 WRITE (Retire) 8 8 TOTALS 34 26 60
Note also that there are 26 read ports on the ROB 406, which in particular constitutes a critical path of the machine. These numerous ports place a burden on system design and performance. As mentioned above, the register files are thereby heavily metal limited, resulting in an increase in the metal area and a worsening of the timing characteristics. Accessing the operand data is most critical in most of these machines, and thus the register file timing becomes a performance bottleneck. The enormous number of ports on the architectural and reorder buffer registers often stand in the way of meeting timing goals. Current architectures attempt to address this problem either at the cost of area or timing or loss in performance.